Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
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Column time – what to write, what subject? My bi-weekly dilemma as I dig through my mother Marion Deaver's files to find a gem. I had found a couple of possible subjects and was ready to compose when I got a call from my brother Bill Deaver, who sent me an article he received from Mojave aircraft enthusiast Cathy Hansen. The X-15 – a test plane/spacecraft that flew 199 times and led the way for future space flights with research for the SR-71 Blackbird, the space shuttle, and the reusable spa...
I get busy with my duties as the Mayor Pro Tem of Tehachapi and with everyday life and the next thing I know it is time for a column. I have known for a week that I had to write one, but then life happened, and I found myself scrambling for a topic. Mother's (Marion Deaver) files never fail to yield something and this time was no exception. I found a press release about the Mojave Volunteer Fire Department. This brought back all sorts of memories from my childhood growing up in Mojave. My dad Pa...
"As a leader, develop a grander vision for your workplace than just success." This week I am taking a right turn from writing about history to tell you about an amazing training I attended recently right here in Tehachapi. I had the pleasure of going to the Global Leadership Summit with four members of the city's leadership team at the Tehachapi Mountain Vineyard. The two day summit was presented via satellite on a wide screen to churches all over the world. Adventist Health was also in...
I have a confession to make. Either I am getting old(er) or I have been writing this column way too long – or both! When I began this venture, it did not occur to me that I should devise a plan to keep track of the materials from my mother, Marion Deaver, so that I would know whether I had written a column about it. At the time I just figured I would remember – after all – I was "not that old" at the time. I guess I never envisioned that I would still be doing this after several years. Yet h...
This is the third and probably the last of the historical collaborations between my brother Bill Deaver and me to write our columns. Bill did most of the writing on this one; however I provided the memories needed for names of people from the past. What prompted this trip down memory lane was the building known as the Poole Building in Mojave suffering damage from a fire recently. This began as a major discussion in my family and with many of the community speculating on how the old building...
The Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance held its quarterly meeting in Mojave recently so its members could get a current look at what is happening in East Kern County. In addition to reports given concerning the Golden Queen mine just south of Mojave, the Test Pilots School located on the Mojave Spaceport, and The Spaceship Company, Bill Deaver Vice President of the Mojave Spaceport Board of Directors, delivered an update on what is current at that facility. I chose to feature Deaver’s rep...
Gun control – or not – has been a topic for the ages. In the late 1960s the East Kern area of the Mojave Desert was an area subjected to illegal shooting. Earlier in the decade was a period when some residents of the Los Angeles area would drive up to the desert to practice "quick draw" with their handguns holstered on their hips – and shoot themselves in the thigh or foot. (Thank you "Gun Smoke", "Have Gun Will Travel", etc.) Once they figured out that guns can cause pain – or even death – they...
“The more things change, the more they remain the same…” There are all sorts of sayings that confirm that though things seem to change and fads come and go, basics remain the same. In searching my mother Marion Deaver’s news files I found an article she wrote in November, 1969, lamenting the damage from vandals to historical sites in the desert area of Eastern Kern County. A tagger was caught and arrested recently in the Tehachapi area for leaving his little marks for all to see on other p...
In 1955 the Southern Kern County Union School District proudly announced that it had completed additions to its school and would dedicate its new buildings April 30, 1955. The additions included a new Kindergarten, four new classrooms, an administration building, cafetorium, and four new classrooms. The district was still a K-8 district in 1955 and high school students, along with other East Kern Districts, climbed on buses and were taken to Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster. Some were...
I found an article of my mom, Marion Deaver that she wrote in 1956. I know that because she actually wrote the year on it! If you read my column regularly you know I am always complaining and trying to guess the year she wrote something because she always cut the date off when she clipped her articles to save them. With that said, the article proclaimed that predictions made a few years earlier that the desert would be a new frontier was gradually coming true. She added that “the women of the d...
When everything about the Oroville Dam and Lake in Northern California started to go to “hell in a hand basket” two weeks ago, I remembered that my mom Marion Deaver rode on a train to that area in the late fifties to see the Feather River and hear about a dam. I searched high and low for an article that she probably wrote for the Bakersfield Californian concerning that trip and what did I find? Nada, zilch, nothing! Those articles must be in the infamous “lost boxes” that my brother Bill De...
I was searching through my mother Marion Deaver’s files, trying to find something to write about. Those of you who read my column know the drill – I dig, I find a nugget, and I get on with writing about my mother’s writings. But I have to tell you the pickings are starting to get slim. I still have a load of files about Tropico Gold Mine and the Kern-Antelope Historical Society, but I try to vary the articles and locations that I choose to write about. I went through some of the histo...
This time I am straying from my mother Marion Deaver's history articles to explain something I have decided to do. Over the New Year weekend I was bored, so I decided I was going to read the entire Sunday newspaper from cover to cover. In that process I began to read Parade Magazine, a Sunday supplement. During that read, I found an article entitled "Resolution: Kindness – Let's Make 2017 the Year of Being Kind." The article featured a photo of Lady Gaga with her quote to encourage kindness: "...
You all know the drill –I scrounge through my mom Marion Deaver's stuff and I find something of hers to write about in this column. Sometimes it can be a little more complicated than that. I found an article from January 24, 1958. My mom wrote about the opening of Burton's Tropico Gold Mine & Mill Tours in Rosamond. I was eight that year. I found the article and remembered a photo Mom took one day that announced the beginning of the dream to open a mine camp at the base of Tropico Mine and c...
My mother Marion Deaver loved being a member of the Kern Antelope Historical Society and she made sure that she, my dad Paul, my brother Bill and I were all charter members of the group. The meetings were held each month and there was always a guest speaker. The part I enjoyed the most were the field trips that took us all over East Kern and once even to Fort Tejon to see history first hand. I found an article of my mom’s that she wrote about guest speaker Ruby Rogers, of Cantil. The meetings w...
Fall has arrived in all of Eastern Kern and of course Tehachapi, where the morning temperatures are a bit cooler than say, Ridgecrest. I was looking for stories about weather and actually found two articles that my mother Marion Deaver had written about desert weather. Of course we all know by now from reading my column that my mother never thought to include a date on anything she cut out to save. I believe the first article was from the early ‘60s as the community of Mojave sought to grow a...
I found a file marked Rosamond history that was marked in my mother Marion Deaver’s handwriting and it was a sort of mishmash of articles and handwritten notes. One article was written by Glenn Settle, Eastern Kern historian of sorts, and another was written out on typed sheets and I cannot make out the name on the return address. It looks like M. Kilchry, but I cannot be sure, and as always my mom did not include any dates on anything. Settle’s article seems to be from the early 1960’s, and the...
As most of you have noticed, it’s election season, which is hard to avoid unless you live on a deserted island. As with most campaigns, those who are running want to be elected to the office which they seek. Everyone has their own mantra and claim that choosing them in November will be the best choice. When all this rhetoric begins and then rumors get added in along with it, it is hard to see the “forest for the trees.” Most of you know that I am currently the mayor of Tehachapi and I have...
Those of you who read my column know I almost always write a piece from my Mother Marion Deaver's "archives" digging through her old files to find some subject to which I can give new life. Last week I had the pleasure to ride in historic railcars with other city and county leaders, from Bakersfield to Tehachapi on a route now dubbed the Tehachapi Trade Corridor. The tour was to showcase the nearly completed double tracking project which offers a 63 percent capacity improvement on the major...
I found a file belonging to my mother Marion Deaver about a story that I had never seen or heard of before. My brother Bill Deaver remembered it, and why it did not happen. It seems that two members of the now defunct Mojave Industrial Action Committee were trying to attract American Potash and Chemical to build a new plant near Mojave. Because the potash plant would have a disposal problem, the two men, Bob Byers and Richard Poole, decided that a long downhill pipeline could be run from Mojave...
In my last column I discussed the news reported in a Rosamond Review from 1959 that I found in my mother, Marion Deaver’s files. This week I want to “review” the many ads that appeared in this 1959 “Progress Edition”. It was the first printing of the publication and was actually printed in Rosamond, with a new press located in a new building for the newspaper. The publication was printed Jan. 8, 1959 and was full of articles and a ton of ads. The paper was 32 pages long – I discovered...
This week I decided to write about Rosamond and I found a Progress Edition from the 1959 Rosamond Review when digging through my mother Marion Deaver’s files. This big edition, published January 8, 1959, may take two columns to cover all of it. The edition, according to co-owner Lou Africa, was the first published and printed in Rosamond. The printing plant was put into operation January 2, 1959. The newspaper was in a four column tabloid format, which was new from the old eight column paper. A...
I found an article my mother Marion Deaver written about water in Tehachapi in 1968 and which was discussed by the city council during a special meeting. The city engineer, whose name was only listed as Mr. Simpson, gave a report to the council outlining several programs which could help the “water situation.” Of course, he added that he “could not categorically ensure the council that these programs would work.” (Note: Much has changed since 1968 concerning technology and other factors...
I find the strangest things when going through my mother Marion Deaver’s files. This week I found an appraisal listing the values of all the schools within the district May 15, 1964, for the purpose of purchasing fire insurance. The appraisal was prepared by Union Appraisal Company from Los Angeles, which had been in business since 1926, according to its letterhead. The report listed the replacement cost of each building. The report showed that the appraisals did not include equipment, land, g...
This week I found an article in a 1957 copy of the Tehachapi News that had reprinted an article from the Fresno Bee in my mom’s files. The article was written by Leo Dollar, following a tour he took of the Tehachapi Valley’s seed industry. At that time Tehachapi was certified as one of the primary seedgrowing areas in the United States. Dollar wrote “This little mountain community, snugly bedded in a cool valley 4,000 feet above the San Joaquin Valley, is demonstrating for the agricultural world the old saying that good things come in small...
